The creation of this group arose from the desire to consolidate and institutionalise a space for its members to collaborate in the contrastive study of German and the Ibero-Romance languages. It began to take shape as a result of the international conference "German dictionaries: new perspectives" held at the Universitat de València, which brought together some of its members.

That first activity was followed by five more conferences (2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020), held both in Germany and Spain, which have brought together new specialists in this field who, from different perspectives and methodological proposals, have participated in the discussion of phenomena of common interest and have enriched the debate initiated by the original members of the group. Besides the works arising from the individual research of its members, the collaboration has so far resulted in the publication between 2015 and 2021 of 6 collective volumes and 1 thematic dossier for an international journal, coordinated by members of the group and with the participation of other members. The award of a grant within the call for grants for consolidatable research groups of the Regional Department in Education, Culture and Sport of the Generalitat Valenciana (Valencian Government), gave this group the opportunity to constitute itself as a research structure with specific goals. Seeking its full consolidation among the groups of Spanish German-Hispanic studies and, in particular, a greater projection in the international sphere.

The team is made up of 13 researchers from 9 different German, Portuguese and Spanish universities. The common denominator for all of them is their mastery of German and Spanish, although some of them have also devoted themselves scientifically to the study of other languages, such as Portuguese, Catalan, Italian and French. Although all the members have philological training, their lines of research have followed very different paths. The aim of the research group was to combine different perspectives and methodological proposals in order to identify and analyse the phenomena related to the object of study more adequately and in a more global approach.

In this way, the group aims to reach results and conclusions of relevance for fields as diverse as descriptive linguistics, discourse analysis, language contrast, discourse genres and traditions, L1 and L2 teaching for specific purposes or didactic lexicography, among others. Of the 13 members of the group, 10 are Germanists working in Spanish universities and 1 in Portugal. Of the 2 members of the team linked to German universities, 1 is a professor in Romance linguistics (Anja Neuss-Hennemann) and 1 in German language didactics (Kathrin Siebold).

It should be noted that several of the researchers have already collaborated in previous projects under their leadership, such as "InCrit. Incidentes críticos en la comunicación transcultural alemán/español/catalán", directed by Marta Fernández-Villanueva (2016-2018, FFI2015-70864-P), "La organización de la información en los discursos orales en su variación genérica: estudio contrastivo alemán vs. Spanish/Portuguese/Catalan" (2019-2020, AICO/2019/123), led by Ferran Robles, and "Systematizität und Variabilität: Konvergenzen und Divergenzen in diskursiven und pragmatischen Erwerbssequenzen der Lernersprachen Deutsch, Französisch, Spanisch und Italienisch bei erwachsenen Fremdsprachenlernern verschiedener Ausgangssprachen" (in force since 2015), led by Kathrin Siebold.

Contributors

• María Egido Vicente - University of Salamanca.
• Maricel Esteban Fonollosa - Universitat de València.
• Marta Patricia Fernández-Villanueva Jané - University of Barcelona.
• Mario Franco Barros - Universidade da Madeira (Portugal).
• Héctor Hernández Arocha - Universität Erfurt (Germany).
• Anja Neuss-Hennemann - Universität Potsdam (Germany).
• Macià Riutort Riutort - Universitat de Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona).
• Raúl Sánchez Prieto - University of Salamanca.
• Kathrin Siebold - Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany). 
• Oliver Strunk - University of Barcelona.

• Translation and interpretation activities
• University education